


Assimilate or Eliminate

by babybrotherdean



Category: Supernatural
Genre: ...yeah that's basically what happens here, Angst, F/M, Murder-Suicide, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 03:29:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10562781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babybrotherdean/pseuds/babybrotherdean
Summary: Ketch has his orders.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I'm like twelve kinds of fucked up about Ketch and Mary and my brain decided I wasn't suffering enough already so. ?????

Assimilate or eliminate.

It’s supposed to be easier than this.

Ketch hasn’t built up his reputation by hesitating. Brutal efficiency, no mercy, following every order to the letter; he’s the best of the best in the London chapter- maybe in the whole world, but he’s not arrogant enough to make that assumption- and the American hunters are supposed to be just another assignment.

They are, for the most part. Hunters are dogs, he’s been taught, and a dog that doesn’t obey its master needs to be put down. He finds hunters- stragglers, mostly, the sloppy ones who can’t cover their own tracks and who disgrace the entire profession- and he deals with them, the same way he’s been dealing with monsters since he was old enough to hold a gun. He pulls the trigger and he destroys their bodies and he moves onto the next target, crossing a name off an ever-lengthening list of known American hunters.

It’s easy and it’s clear-cut until suddenly Mary Winchester is standing in front of him, the two of them alone in the motel room where he’s called her to meet and it… isn’t.

“You don’t have to do this,” she tells him, and she’s standing defensively, weight on the balls of her feet like she’s ready to jump at him, jump away from him. Jump out of the way of the bullet he’s supposed to put right between her eyes. “Look- I don’t know what’s going on, but… but I heard about Mick. You don’t have to do what they’re telling you.”

Ketch wonders, absently, how much she knows about what he’s done. If she knows about the other hunters, the children. The families who had to be put down for the sake of a job properly done. If she can see the blood on his hands, if she felt it when he touched her before; he wonders if it even mattered before now, before she was the one standing at the wrong end of his gun.

It never seemed to bother her before all this.

“Mary,” he says, and then “you don’t understand,” even though he isn’t sure that he does anymore, either. “I have my orders. You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

She doesn’t, though, and he can read it in her eyes, the way she takes a half-step closer to him. To her own end at his hand. “Having orders doesn’t mean you have to follow them. Ketch- _Arthur_. I know you’re better than this. You can do the right thing here.”

He can’t, though. He _can’t._

The safety’s off and his fingertip pets down the curve of the trigger, a mockery of the way he touched Mary in those brief moments they spent together. “I’m sorry,” he replies, and his voice softens a little bit, unintentional. She’s already exposed every one of his weak points and he doesn’t know when his hand started trembling, but he can’t seem to make it stop anymore. “I have my orders.”

_Assimilate or eliminate._

_Eliminate._

_(I’m going to have to end up shooting this one.)_

He sees her lips part one more time, perhaps to plead with him again- she’s reaching, too, fingers outstretched to grab for the gun, or his shirt, maybe- but it’s too late, and he feels like his heart has stopped beating for a moment as the gun kicks back against his hand with the force of the shot. There’s shock on her face for the fraction of a second it takes the bullet to meet its target, and then she stutters backwards, and the wound in her forehead is perfectly round until it starts leaking blood.

Ketch goes down with her, catches Mary in his arms as his knees hit the floor hard. She’s long-gone, eyes wide and shocked and empty, and she still feels warm and alive to the touch, and Ketch is-

He didn’t think there was anything left inside of him to be hurt. Not after the elders worked so hard to scrape him clean, to carve out every part of him that knew how to think or feel. He’s gone decades without flinching, without hesitating, without stopping to ask why- and now there’s this woman in his arms, this fierce, beautiful, dead woman who makes him ache in a way he didn’t believe he was capable of aching.

None of it feels right anymore. Nothing about the blood tracing out vibrant, crimson rivers on her skin is right, mission be damned. Mary didn’t deserve this, and she wasn’t a dog. She wasn’t built to follow orders and to be punished for disobedience. Not the way he was.

The gun clatters to the ground and it makes him flinch before he reaches, shaking, brushes his fingers through her hair and stains his own skin with her blood and knows that there’s no way out of this. There’s no fixing this kind of mistake.

_Assimilate or eliminate._

Sam and Dean will find him soon, he’s sure. If their histories are of any indication, they’ll stop at nothing to avenge their mother and her cruel, unfair death, and Ketch- Ketch is supposed kill them, too. They’re the final targets of this mission, the ones that a small part of him has always know he would not be able to kill.

He’s good, but the Winchesters are in a league entirely their own.

Perhaps, as some small apology for the horrible things he’s done- for the lives he’s taken, the blood he’s spilled, the wonderful, vibrant woman who rests against him now, limp and lifeless- perhaps he can save them the trouble. They’ll have enough on their plates dealing with the elders, and Ketch knows that one less target means an easier time for them moving forward.

Mary is still warm when he picks up the gun again, and he watches her as he brings the end of the barrel to rest against his own temple. Her eyes are still open, so he uses his free hand to carefully slide them shut, hating the bloodstains he leaves on her skin and trying to ignore them, instead.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” he whispers as his finger curls around the trigger one more time. She doesn’t respond, and he closes his eyes, letting himself rest in the grief that tries to strangle him for another long moment.

_Eliminate._

“I’m so sorry.”

There’s blackness after he pulls the trigger. After a lifetime of feeling empty, he’d expected nothing less.

**Author's Note:**

> *prays to the spn writers that this doesn't actually happen*


End file.
